A tired old sea captain’s Log, here’s my one last big write-up on convoys, mines and spawns, what’s fixable and what we should push Gaijin for Naval EC
Too Long to Read watch Video Below
(https://youtu.be/_SjqSmNMMrM)
Naval Enduring Confrontation after 9.0 Convoy abuse, Mines, and how EC could become a true naval campaign
I want to talk about Naval EC, how it really plays today, the tricks and exploits people use, and what might improve with the updates coming down the line.
This is based on my own time in EC, running with organised teams and events, and listening to other captains. The goal is simple:
To give you a clear picture of where EC stands now, and some honest, practical suggestions to make it more strategic, balanced and worth our time.
An old sea Captains Essay on” What is Naval EC trying to be”
Naval Enduring Confrontation is meant to be War Thunder’s long-form naval simulator. A mode where battles aren’t just quick brawls on small maps for a few capture points.
“Instead of the chaotic, short matches where destroyers and battleships clash in close quarters and you’re sent back to the hangar after 15 minutes,
EC offers expansive maps and strategic, objective-driven gameplay “
No there is none of that in an EC fight. A fight that spans across a whole stretch of ocean on a much larger map. A game of Tactics and strategies that Actually matter.
Okay, we only have 4 maps as big as they are, however there is a call for perhaps a couple more and the Falklands Map would be very interesting too see . Hint Hint. (See Falklands Event Video Here) where we play a custom game in the style of EC so to speak and have an honest conversation about it later, good side watch.
Let’s go on.
On paper, Enduring Confrontation is a strategic, objective-driven PvPvE mode
Big maps, shifting tasks, and teams racing to win tickets up to 15,000 to win, by capturing ports, defending or raiding convoys, and completing side objectives over battles that can run for up to 1.5–3 hours in the Air as well as the Land and Sea.
EC is designed around persistent respawns and evolving lineups
You start in Lower BR rating ships 4.7 to 5.0 and aircraft can be spawned with min 200 SP for a fighter, earn Silver Lions and spawn points, then bring in heavier BR vessels or more capable planes as the match goes on.
Every respawn costs SL, and for higher tier ships you also pay SP on top, so the whole mode is designed around the idea of building a task force overtime rather than dumping your biggest ship into a five-minute arcade brawl.
Moving and fixed objectives
Convoys spawn couple minutes after the game starts usually on the edges of the map and crawl toward friendly ports.
One team escort them, while the other team hunts them down. There are Ports capture points, with AI defenses in the form of coastal defenses, an obligatory torpedo net protecting the perimeter and a ticket impact when a Port cap flips.
Around that, you’ve got AI fleets, carriers, recon air targets and other tasks to complete, and all three arms of the game. Aircraft Naval and AI Ground Convoy targets are included in the game mode
Bluewater, coastal and air, are meant to matter
Ships trading fire over Spawn zones fighting for position or strategizing with fellow Captains.
coastal craft being a nuisance,
pilots scouting, striking and providing cover.
Done right, Naval EC is the closest thing War Thunder has to a living naval sim campaign, not just another quick match in a different playlist.
Where the mode quietly breaks
In my experience Naval EC doesn’t fall apart in one big obvious way. It frays in lots of small niggling ways, players exploiting these frays, that most seasoned captains have seen a time over.
One of the first issues is convoy and SP farming. Since coastal convoy spawns are close to the action and there’s no ‘time alive’ filter on rewards, players often exploit this by repeatedly spawning Torpedo Boats “The Douglass” or equivalent or fast frigates near convoys, firing their weapons, and immediately leaving the match to repeat the process.
I recall seeing a forum report of someone finishing an EC match with 20-plus deaths, zero kills and still spawning in a battleship.
By challenging this behavior near convoys. It’s not a bug in the code; it’s a gap in the way the modes are written at this point!
I’ve seen this behavior, and I’ve been partied to it, I’m no saint when it comes to exploiting exploits. For the all-important, THE WIN.
After all you play to win and its human nature to exploit weaknesses in systems, so I’m not talking from un-enlightened or saintly though shall not spam position here.
Currently the game mode doesn’t care how long you stayed alive, or whether you gave the enemy a proper chance to fight back. Only that you technically spawned fired a load of quick concession rounds off, got hits and did damage. Rinse and repeat Spam, everyone gets mad about.
This will change with the new damage model in Update 9.0 and address issues we’ve previously written about. Kill Stealing returning to the 2018 model of compartmental damage in line with newer weapon systems and we think that the new update will address allot of these complaints and is a step in the right direction.
The second weak point is how coastal ships get used or abused.
EC’s own guides admit that coastal vessels sometimes get closer spawns to convoys and recommend using that for aggressive attacks. That’s fine in moderation. In practice, it often turns coastal into disposable torpedo sticks.
You spawn on top of the convoy, sprint in, throw torps at anything that moves and either die instantly or bail out to only repeatedly do it again.
Instead of being patrol craft fighting around ports, rivers and shorelines, a lot of coastal play near convoys devolves into “short-range ordnance delivery with no intention of staying in the fight.”
Then there are the convoys that stall or bug out, especially on certain maps. A convoy that gets stuck or paths badly, stops being a moving objective and turns into a ticket farm or a dead weight.
Players have already suggested adding timers and ticket bleed so convoys can’t be held hostage forever, but as it stands you can still see EC matches where the whole rhythm of the battle is warped by a convoy that isn’t doing what the mode expects it to do.
As featured in a Recent EC ROUND TABLE Discussions we covered a lot of what’s being written here. This essay is a compilation of years of playing, networking and collaborating with recognized players on the seas and there are many captains I’d like to thank for helping me to be able to understand and become well acquainted with the games and especially EC were I like to be.
Layered on top of this is the heavy-ship spam snowball
Because spawn points accumulate quickly for skilled players and heavy ships that aren’t expensive enough in SP, were one team often brings battlecruisers and battleships into the fight too early, while the other side are struggling and still using destroyers, cruisers, and frigates.
Another bug bearer of mine is if you join late, you often spawn into a world where the big guns are already out and you’re” just fish food” trying to reach the frontline.
EC is supposed to build up to those Capital Ships over time; right now, it can feel like the race to get the biggest BB, this is simply “who abused the early SP torp missile and rocket spam exploit fastest.”
Finally, for a mode that sells itself on long battles and layered objectives, mines are barely in the picture.
They exist.
A few ships carry them, but in Naval EC they de-spawn after a fixed timer instead of lasting the whole match. In matches that can last up to three hours, minefields that disappear after just 15–30 minutes feel more like temporary gimmicks than meaningful strategic obstacles.
“I personally have laid hundreds of mines over the past years, and I think I managed 2 mined killed in all of 5 of them.” Its so pleasing if you do manage quite a fluke as they say.”
There are already suggestion threads asking for EC mines to stick around until they’re swept, detonated or the minelayer leaves; until that happens, mine warfare never really rises above a gimmick, and one more potential layer of EC’s “navy sim campaign” fantasy goes to waste.
Cleaning up spawns, SP and convoys
If Naval EC is ever going to feel like a proper long format naval confrontation instead of a clever farm, the first thing that needs re-visiting is the way spawns and SP interact with convoys.
Spawn logic should be based on ship roles rather than randomness. Coastal boats should be deployed near ports, shore batteries, and river mouths, allowing them to fulfill their intended functions—defending harbors, raiding coastlines, and harassing ground targets along the shoreline
Frigates, sub-chasers and future minesweeper/ Anti-Submarine Warfare escorts are the ones that should spawn in close with convoys and at ports, they’re the natural screen for subs, mines and torpedo attacks.
The heavy Bluewater battlecruisers, battleships and heavy Cruisers
Should be spawned far out on the periphery of the maps, meaning the biggest ships are furthest from the frontline.
Destroyers and cruisers
You should spawn at Mid-Range Bluewater entry points where you still get to bring dd or LC, but you must sail them into the fight instead of materializing directly on top of a convoy spawn.
On top of that, heavy ships should be treated more like “roles” than spam.
Just as other games cap how many snipers or tanks you can field, Naval EC would benefit from class caps: a limited number of BB/BC slots per team, a limited number of top-end cruisers, then broader room for destroyers and escorts.
That alone would stop the worst “12 battleships a side” games or imbalanced sides and push team compositions back toward something that looks like a task force instead of a museum parking lot.
The second piece is SP abuse and J-out chaining.
We have hinted above about this very issue, right now, nothing in the rules cares how long you were alive or whether the enemy had a fair chance to fight you.
Even with the new naval Update 9.0 the game still doesn’t really distinguish what you did with your time in your ship – it mostly cares that you were in the battle doing damage and useful actions.
There’s a time-in-battle and activity component to RP/SL, but it tracks how long you were in the match, not whether you played a full, committed life in each ship.
That’s how you still get the classic convoy abuse: spawn a PT or frigate right on the convoy, dump your torps, rockets or missiles, instantly J-out, then do it again until you’ve farmed enough SP to bring in a capital ship, even if your scoreboard reads something like “20 deaths, 0 kills”. “a comment that made me laugh”.: Reddit+1
The fix isn’t complicated: add a time-alive filter per life on top of the existing formulas. If you leave your ship before some minimum window, say three to five minutes, you get heavily reduced SP/SL from that life and a short cooldown before you can spawn again.
Play a full life and you’re rewarded normally.
Treat ships as disposable casings for your ordnance launch pad, and the system then stops paying you like a hero for a string of 60-second suicide runs.
Forward convoy spawns although not permanent and often change position still need reworking in my opinion. A simple per-player cap
For example, only two direct convoy spawns per convoy per player – would keep the front line hot without turning it into an infinite respawn pad five kilometers from the objective. You can still throw yourself into a desperate defense or attack a couple of times right on the nose; after that, you’re coming in from further back and fighting your way up like everyone else.
“In an Old Guide” I wrote” How to play EC. Where we talk about this exploit. Please see the detailed PDF with a more detailed look. You will find the link at the bottom of the post.
Finally, convoys need to stop being immortal or hostage able
Each convoy should spawn with a clear lifetime timer and a ticket effect: while the convoy is active, failing to engage it should drain tickets for the side that ought to be attacking.
If the timer runs out without it being destroyed or reaching its destination, the game should resolve that objective automatically.
Then this should apply the ticket change and clears the board for the next Convoy Spawn or port attack.
That way bugged or stalled convoys can’t freeze a match in place, and teams can’t sit on one broken AI route to farm SP forever. Thus, Convoys go back to being what they were meant to be, moving targets that live for a while, matter allot, and then make way for the next wave of tasks.
Rewards should be higher for the kill on these targets to offer incentive as it’s the mission during the game “it’s on the map page under objective and in fact its second to spotting the carrier. Its is supposed to flip.
This in my opinion is to give each team a chance at defending or attacking and yes to travel through the evolution to bigger and better ships.
Mines, escorts and the environment
For a mode that likes to call itself an Enduring Confrontation, Naval EC doesn’t yet treat the sea itself as much of an enemy.
In real world scenarios mines play a large part of defending lines both at sea and on land, there are probably still loose ww2 sea mines still floating around somewhere to this day, they do pop up quiet literally on occasion.
So, in WT Mines exist, a few ships carry them, but with de-spawn timers measured in minutes instead of match-length, they’re more like fireworks than weapons. In battles that can run well over an hour, a minefield that evaporates halfway through isn’t a minefield, it’s a special effect.
The easiest way to fix that is to give the ocean some teeth and give escorts a second job.
Picture fixed mine belts laid across obvious chokepoints on convoy routes, shown on the tactical map as danger zones rather than individual icons.
Both teams know they’re there; neither can ignore them. Those belts don’t vanish after 15–30 minutes – they stay for the whole match unless somebody sweeps or detonates them.
Now your convoy isn’t just worried about torpedoes and shells, it must navigate hostile water, and your escorts aren’t just gun platforms, they’re guides.
On top of that, player-laid mines in EC should behave like part of the terrain, not timed gadgets.
Give minelayers a hard cap on how many mines they can have in the water and how many minelayers hulls a team can field, then let those mines persist until the ship leaves, they’re swept, or something hits them.
To keep things sane, make mines more vulnerable to damage so random HE, bombs or shells and depth charges will naturally chew through sloppy spam, while well-placed belts near ports and narrow channels matter.
That’s where frigates, sub-chasers and future minesweepers come into their own. Give them a sweep mode that slows them down but clears or neutralizes mines in a small radius or cone ahead of the bow. Over time, they carve safe corridors through fixed mine belts and player mines alike.
Combine that with a handful of mid-channel support ships – tenders or depots where ships can rearm, repair and top up crew, but not spawn, and you get a proper mil nav sim:
Minelayers shaping the battlefield, minesweepers and escorts fighting both enemies and the environment, convoys threading the gap, and logistics quietly keeping the whole thing afloat.
It’s a lot closer to a naval simulator than the current “drop a few mines, watch them disappear and forget they were ever there.”
What is the use of the carrier if at all?
The issue with the carrier in Naval EC is that a lot of players treat it like a free-for-all target, when the game has stricter rules.
The enemy carrier only becomes a valid objective once it has been “spotted” by a friendly ship or aircraft within about 4.5 km.
Until then it doesn’t appear in the objective list. If you destroy it before that, the kill simply doesn’t count as an objective, you’ve basically killed the carrier, but your team gets neither the proper reward nor the intended objective impact. War Thunder — official forum
On top of that, in the current Naval EC setup the carrier isn’t a functional airbase:
multiple reports note that you can’t realistically land and rearm on it in this mode, so aircraft still must use land airfields. In practice, the carrier is just a distant AI ship, an objective floating at the back of the map, not a living part of your team’s logistics.
That’s why experienced EC teams focus on spotting it correctly and then decide whether it’s worth their time or effort targeting or even the long sail to range to sink her, rather than treating it as a casual “shoot it on sight” bonus.
Pilots, subs and missiles – the other two additions. Will they be in update 9.0?
For all the focus on ships, Naval EC has never just been about Boats, Ships and planes.
From the start it’s been sold as a combined-arms operation, with captains and pilots sharing the same long battle space.
The official guides open with “Hello Captains and Pilots!” and spell out that EC’s big maps and shifting objectives are meant to be fought by ships and aircraft together:
Planes scouting convoys and ports, striking fleets and coastal targets, and cycling through airfields and carriers over long sessions. In practice, that means air isn’t just extra damage – it’s eyes, cover and the long arm of the fleet.
Irish Viking Detailed EC Crew Guide to Enduring Confrontation with pdf Guide at the bottom
You can already see the bones of proper air roles in Naval EC. Recon pilots lift off from certain type of Players ships and airfields, spot convoys and fleets, and can mark enemies for the team, execute torpedo and strike bombers and runs on the convoys.
Carriers and heavy ships, fighters fly CAP over ports and convoys, trying to keep enemy bombers and attackers from ever getting a clean run.
If EC leans into that, you get a natural slot for Aircraft in the Convoy and Mine game:
Scouts finding routes and threats, strike planes punishing exposed heavies and port defenses, fighters tying the whole thing together with a proper air umbrella instead of random dogfights in the middle of nowhere.
For that to work, the basics must be solid; carriers in EC need to behave as reliable forward airbases, with landings that trigger repair and rearm, not just pretty deck landings that leave you dry.
Looking forward, Gaijin has already said the quiet part out loud: playable submarines are planned.
In a recent Q&A they repeated that subs were tested before and answered the “are you going to add them?” question with a simple “Yes, we have plans for playable submarines, but no further details on this yet.”
If EC gets its convoys, escorts and minefields in order, subs will slide straight into that ecosystem: convoy routes become natural hunting grounds; mine belts and ASW escorts become the tools to protect those routes.
Aircraft and patrol boats pick up ASW duties alongside depth-charging frigates. The triangle of subs, escorts, and air only really works in a mode that already respects roles and terrain.
On the surface side, the missile era is already here. Ships like USS Charles F. Adams are sailing into the game with RIM-24 Tartar SAMs that can be used against aircraft and ships, turning some destroyers into true guided missile platforms.
At the same time, the “Seek & Destroy” update rolled out active radar-homing FOX-3 missiles and a wider family of guided weapons on the air side.
As those tools become more common, Naval EC can’t rely on messy spawns and vague objectives without breaking completely.
Long-range missiles plus sloppy spawn logic is a recipe for lopsided farms. If, instead, the mode tightens up where and how ships spawn, what convoys and ports do, and how mines and escorts shape the sea, then missiles and subs become part of a richer picture – one more dimension of a naval campaign, not the entire story on their own.
EC as a headline naval mode
The last piece isn’t inside the battle; it’s how you even get into Naval EC in the first place.
Right now, EC lives in the “Events and Tournaments” tab. Or I’ve recently found through Simulations Tab under to Battle Tab where it is in the menu, these are the 2 ways to queue up. Confusing eh!
“You find a rather bland screen without much instruction, or visual notification. Apart from a tiny revolving icon top right-hand corner of your screen and a bit of extra text in bottom left hand side of the window and a large vastness of empty screen.
If you were searching or wondering perhaps you had not seen the small, and I mean small information that is displayed. then this would make you think? Are we in a queue at all!” I can imagine why people can’t find the mode or even know about it in its current loading form.”
If it were truly simulator, why then could we not have the same loading information as the other modes Air and Ground?
Anyway, EC is available from Thursday to Monday, flipping between AB and RB every 24 hours. That makes it feel temporary by design:
Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it isn’t, sometimes it disappears for a weekend because another event is running and nobody really explains why.
For a mode that’s supposed to be the long-format, strategic side of naval, hiding it in a rotating event slot undercuts it before the first shell is fired.
On top of that, the queues themselves send a message.
You don’t have to look hard to find stories of people waiting 30–60 minutes for a Naval EC match that never pops or starts at a queue with a dozen players sitting in limbo because the minimum player requirement is set too high.
Even in regular Naval RB, players talk about five, seven-minute waits with “100k people online”, and threads on Reddit and Steam routinely ask if anyone is still playing naval or why the wait times are so bad. That combination, a mode hidden in Events and lobbies that feel half-empty, is one of the main reasons EC has a reputation as “that rare thing you might catch once in a while”, instead of a core part of the naval experience.
If Naval EC is going to carry all the ideas in this essay, convoys that matter, mine belts, escorts, pilots, future subs,
it really needs to sit on the main naval screen. Naval should have permanent EC buttons for AB and RB next to the usual Naval Battles, not a weekend event slot you have to dig for. Other players have already suggested exactly that:
Make an improved Naval EC a permanently available mode that largely replaces the current small-cap RB or at least stands alongside it as a full-fat alternative. Give it a clear identity: this is where you go if you want long missions, moving objectives and proper fleets, not just quick caps.
The rest is plumbing. Split EC into a random queue and Squadron Battles or team/ops queue so organized alliances or squadrons can hunt each other without steamrolling solo players every time.
Aim for healthier team sizes – 20v20 or 24v24 as a baseline, with sensible backfill, instead of starting three-hour operations with eight people a side.
Most importantly to a lot of players I know, it would be making sure EC counts like any other main mode for progression and tasks when the BR and vehicle types of matches, so playing it doesn’t feel like stepping outside the real game. If you agree, please comment in the comments section.
None of that is glamorous design work, but without it, all the nice ideas about convoys, spawns and mine warfare end up stranded in a queue screen.
Bringing It All Together
When you look at these suggestions—improved spawn logic, meaningful roles for each ship class, persistent minefields, balanced SP rewards, and a permanent place for EC in the main menu—they’re not just isolated tweaks. Together, they form a blueprint for a richer, more strategic, and more rewarding Naval EC experience. Each change supports the others:
Better spawns and class caps encourage teamwork and tactical play.
Persistent mines and convoy timers make the environment and objectives matter throughout the match.
Balanced rewards and anti-exploit measures keep the focus on playing well, not just gaming the system.
And making EC a permanent, visible mode ensures more players can enjoy and invest in these improvements.
If these elements are developed in tandem, Naval EC could finally become the headline naval mode it was meant to be—a place for long-form, combined-arms naval battles that reward skill, strategy, and cooperation
Conclusion – one last Thought, message and Rambling
I don’t think I’m smarter than the devs, or because I believe Naval EC is “unplayable”. I wrote it because I’ve spent a lot of time on these seas, seen the same cracks open up again and again, and I know there’s a better version of this mode hiding just under the surface.
Convoys that move and matter without being farm factories, spawns that reflect ship roles instead of chaos, mines and escorts that actually change how you sail, pilots and subs that slot into a coherent picture instead of feeling bolted on, all of that is within reach of the tools War Thunder already has.
Whether we ever see the full package is up to Gaijin.
Maybe we only get bits and pieces: longer-lived mines here, a tweak to convoy behavior there, a few spawns and SP changes to blunt the worst abuses. Even that would help.
Maybe, if enough of us keep talking about Naval EC as something worth building on, not just a weird weekend event, it eventually gets the kind of attention Air and Ground EC have had over the years.
Or maybe it remains what it is now: a rough but lovable long-form mode that a small group of captains keep sailing because nothing else quite scratches the same itch.
In the end, I’m sharing my vision in hopes it helps someone—whether it’s a developer planning a rework, a player seeking to understand EC’s quirks, or a fellow veteran who enjoys long battles and dynamic objectives. If these ideas spark improvement, then writing this was worthwhile.
Good luck out there, Captains—fair seas